Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2) Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  Falling for Alexander

  Published by Claire Robyns

  Copyright © 2013 by Claire Robyns

  Cover by Viola Estrella

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected]

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

  www.clairerobyns.com

  Chapter One

  White-crested waves slapped the jutting rocks of the tiny cove. The slightest suggestion of inclement weather, Kate knew, and the calm would be whipped on its head with the battering roar that had shaped the limestone cliffs.

  Down by the water’s edge, barefoot with handfuls of champagne satin and silk bunched just out of reach of the lapping waves, Megan struck a playful pose against the sinking sun.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Effortlessly dashing and elegant in that black tux, and every bit as barefoot as his brand new wife, Jack Marlin prowled closer and closer, snapping away. The official photographer had done a stunning job in the quaint rear garden of the town church, but Jack, a renowned wildlife photographer himself, apparently couldn’t resist the urge to create his own version of memories for this special day.

  Kate brought her smile in from the couple and leant back against the deck railing of Smugglers Inn. The poor place was almost as battered as the rocky outcrops and far from the obvious choice of reception venues. But that was a story she still had to pry loose from her friend’s lips. The wedding party was small and most of the guests were already finding their places inside. When one grew up in a town the size of Corkscrew Bay, there was no middle ground. You either invited everyone or you restricted the guest list to family and a few die-hard friends.

  Her gaze went to the far end of the deck, to where Isobel stood, nursing a glass of red wine in her hands and staring into the distance. As usual, she was beautifully turned out in an evening gown shimmering with tones of rust and golden embers, her hair and makeup impeccable, her chin held high in that confident, serene manner.

  No sign of the girl who’d downed a bottle of Tequila and torn her cottage apart, of the girl who’d been dumped by her dumb-ass fiancé on the night of her hen party several months ago. Then again, there’d been no sign of that girl the morning straight after either. Isobel had fallen apart and put herself back together in the space of twelve hours. Not the healthiest road to recovery, and Kate didn’t trust it one bit. But Isobel had never been chatty, at least not with her and Megan.

  Swinging her pair of strappy stilettos in one hand, Kate crossed the deck in her flip-flops. Most of the ladies had slipped back into their fancy shoes as soon as they’d crossed the sandy beach, but if the bride could prance around barefoot, Kate decided, then she could wear her flip-flops. She needed exactly three fingers to count the number of times she’d been forced into high heels and the slatted wooden floors of the inn made a disastrous training ground.

  “You okay?” she asked as she reached Isobel’s side.

  “Yes, fine.” Isobel glanced at her and there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her smile. No indication she was supposed to have been the first of them to get married. Her gaze went out again. “They look so happy together. I’m really pleased for Megan.”

  “Yeah, same here,” Kate said. She hesitated, searching for more to say, something that didn’t sound like pity, and came up blank. “Well, I’m going inside. You’re coming?”

  “In a while.” Isobel flashed another smile.

  Kate left it there. If Isobel did need to talk, Finn would be her first, and only, choice anyway. They’d worried the wedding would be too much for Isobel, but she couldn’t not be invited either.

  Inside, few changes had been made to the rustic décor of the inn for the event. The leather sofas usually crowding the enormous fireplace had been removed to make space for more tables. The centrepieces were giant shells with rose petals flowing onto the white linen tablecloths. And that was about it. Even the menu consisted of traditional fare served by Smugglers Inn on any other day.

  Kate, suspecting from early on that Megan was trying to recreate something here, thought the whole idea was cute. Mrs. Lane, Megan’s mom, was less convinced but no amount of emotional blackmail had persuaded her daughter to move the reception to the Conservatory Room of the Great Corkscrew Bay Hotel perched on the very end of the bay headlands.

  Kate made her way to what would have been the bridesmaids’ table, if Megan had had bridesmaids. Lucy, all the way down from London for the occasion, was already seated. As was Finn, who’d never be mistaken for an unofficial bridesmaid, but he had been one of their best friends since almost forever. By default, the chair beside him was reserved for Isobel, so she pulled out a chair on the other side of Lucy.

  “How is Isobel?” asked Lucy.

  Kate shrugged. “She says she’s fine.”

  “I feel terrible about not being able to make it down for her hen party.”

  “There wasn’t any party,” Kate reminded her.

  “That makes it worse,” Lucy groaned, wrinkling her nose.

  Finn slid his elbows across the table, his Irish blue eyes narrowing first on Lucy, and then on Kate. “Isobel is just fine.”

  Lucy arched a brow at him. “Has she spoken to you about Ian?”

  “What’s there to say?” Finn pulled back. “He’s scum and now he’s out of her life. Good riddance. She’s not going to waste another minute on the douche bag and she bloody well isn’t pining from a broken heart.”

  “That’s what she told you?” Kate said.

  Finn nodded.

  “And you believed her?” Lucy snorted. “You are so clueless.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Okay, maybe she’s not pining from a broken heart, but she was on the verge of marrying Ian before he threw her over for her cousin. That’s a lot of crap to deal with.”

  “Her cousin landed up with the short end of that stick,” Finn said.

  Lucy leaned in closer to him. “Sooner or later, Izzy’s going to explode and you’d better be ready to sweep up the pieces.”

  “Incoming,” Kate whispered as she spotted Isobel in the doorway. She looked at Finn. “Have you got the folder?”

  “Um, yeah.” He reached behind to delve into the leather satchel strung over the back of his chair and passed the glossy pink folder over.

  “Look at this,” Kate said, extracting the special edition of the Corkscrew Weekly and shooting Isobel a wide, innocent smile as she joined them.

  Lucy pulled the newspaper closer, peering at the front-page spread.

  There was a boy, who met a girl…

  Below the headline, a close-up shot of Jack and Megan taken way back, their first encounter, in fact, covered the rest of the page.

  At the time, Kate had been hanging over the edge of the bluff, using her camera lens to spy on the helicopter landing in the forecourt of Darrock Castle. When she’d brought her head up, camera already glued to her eyes, her trigger finger had acted on impulse from the sparks flying between her friend and the gorgeous stranger they’d happened upon.

  Lucy flipped to page two, realised the entire edition was devoted to the happy couple, and her eyes widened on Kate in horror. “She’s going to kill you.”

  “This is a private edition, you idiot. A party favour for Megs and Jack.” Kate chuckled.
“Although I may well be on someone else’s hit list when the real paper goes out on Tuesday morning.”

  The following Tuesday, chuckling was the last thing on Kate’s mind when she held the weekly edition in her hands.

  Another year, another snub for the Corkscrew Bay Runt. We’re not good enough for an Easter Egg Hunt.

  She twisted her lower lip between her teeth as she stared at the pathetically sad-faced cartoon Easter Bunny drawn below the caption.

  That wasn’t the problem.

  Neither was her sharply-worded article on the petition that had, once again, been ignored by the owner of Darrock Castle. She wasn’t a coward and no, she didn’t regret calling Alexander Gerardo out by name now that she finally knew it.

  Her only concern was Mrs. Pinnings, housekeeper to the mysterious man who’d bought the castle almost three years ago. Last week, after months of courting Mrs. Pinnings at the Post Office queue, the woman had let his surname slip from her suspiciously guarded tongue. Kate didn’t wish any harm on the poor woman and who knew what Mr. Gerardo was capable of?

  Seriously?

  Who buys a castle that’s practically part of a town’s heritage and yet hasn’t shown his face in the community, not even once?

  It had taken her close to three years just to get his full name. And if the helicopters flying in at odd hours were none of her business, as Harry was fond of pointing out, well, the annual Easter egg hunt certainly was.

  The problem was, Googling him had yielded nothing but a handful of unlikely results and so she honestly had no idea what Alexander Gerardo was capable of or how many goons he employed. As a journalist, Kate liked to think she’d never give up a source, but she had a particularly low pain threshold.

  She rolled her eyes at herself.

  He doesn’t employ goons!

  Of course she didn’t really believe that. But, still…

  She jumped as the phone screeched from the outer reception desk, which was a loose concept since the paper had never employed a receptionist.

  Kate punched in the code to redirect the call to her phone and answered. “Corkscrew Weekly, good morning.”

  “I need to speak to the senior editor.” The gravel tenor rumbled over that order and down her spine to curl into her toes.

  Kate blew out a long, shallow breath.

  An abrupt, “Please” followed, tacked on like an afterthought.

  Didn’t matter. There was a sexy voice, and then there was sin. This voice belonged on a face with chiselled cheekbones and a hollowed jaw. On a tanned body rippled in lean muscle. Designer suits and Armani sunglasses. Dark brown hair mussed with a careless hand and sliding into the turn of a collar.

  “Hello?” came the voice again, traced with accents of Italian.

  “Um, speaking,” she said, fanning hot cheeks with her free hand. If Megan were here, she’d put this guy on speakerphone. “This is the senior editor.”

  “Excellent. Then you’re responsible for approving that piece on the front page of the paper today.”

  Her mind snapped to attention and her toes uncurled. For writing it. Approving it. Proofing it. “Whom I speaking to?”

  “Alexander Gerardo,” he said. “I don’t expect you to recall the paper or retract that article, but I’d like to make myself clear, Ms…?”

  “Kate Hadley,” she drew out in a cautious tone.

  A static pause took up the next couple of seconds.

  Was he writing down her name?

  What for?

  This wasn’t The Godfather, she reminded herself, even if the mysterious Alexander Gerardo had a hint of Italian accent to match the name. God, and she’d thought his voice sinfully hot.

  To be honest, she still did, but now she was far less interested in fantasising about the kind of face and body that went with that voice.

  “Ms. Hadley, let me make myself clear,” he continued. “I don’t interfere with anyone else’s life and I’d appreciate the favour returned.”

  She arched a brow at the wall opposite. “You should have thought of that before you bought our national heritage and shut it down.”

  “Castle Darrock isn’t registered as a British National Heritage site,” he said with a caustic bite to that sinful voice. “I did my homework, Ms. Hadley, now you do yours.”

  “Not officially,” Kate snapped back, “but if you’d spared… Oh my God, you didn’t, did you? You never even visited the area before you bought Darrock, I’ll just bet. Did you know, Corkscrew Bay was founded around the fishing village and the castle?”

  “I didn’t phone in for a history lesson.”

  “You don’t just uproot such deeply founded traditions with a signature on a purchase document, Mr. Gerardo. Not to mention our tourism trade boosted from Lord Ashley’s open days.”

  “Lord Ashley opened his doors for a price,” he drawled. “I don’t need the income supplement.”

  “The Ashley family opened the castle to the public long before the estate ran into financial trouble.”

  “I bought a home,” he said, his voice thinning with each word, “not a showpiece.”

  “You bought a piece of our community.”

  A sigh came down the line. “Listen, Ms. Hadley, maybe Lord Ashley sold you out. I don’t know. I suggest you take up your disgruntlement with—”

  “I’m not asking you to open up your home, Mr. Gerardo. Lock the doors and chain down the garden gnomes if you’re that neurotic. But now, I’d like to make myself clear. For the last three decades, the Easter egg hunt has been hosted in the grounds of Darrock Castle and perhaps that’s something you might have considered before you started throwing your millions around. If you want to live in obscurity, there are plenty of sprawling country estates to do so. You did not have to buy our castle.”

  She took a deep breath and held it.

  Crap, I went too far.

  Our castle?

  Seriously?

  “I have no intention of arguing your worthless points.” A curse masquerading as a muttered breath came down the line. “Put me directly through to the manager, please.”

  Kate cradled the headset to her breast, doing her best to resist the urge to tell him exactly where he could shove her worthless points.

  Italy had as much history as England, if not more. Italian or English, they both knew the responsibilities that came with properties such as Castle Darrock. She, however, was apparently the only one who cared.

  She spoke into the phone again. “Kate Hadley, manager of the Corkscrew Weekly, good morning.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “The only joke here is your arrogance,” she retorted. “Last time I checked, the press still had freedom of speech in this country. We’re not hiding behind the hedges with long lens cameras, Mr. Gerardo.”

  Okay, she had hung from the edge of the bluff a couple of times with a long lens camera to get a bird’s eye view of the castle nestled in the valley, but he didn’t know that. “We’re entitled to our opinions and I’m passionately opinionated about perpetuating traditions.”

  Another pause. “Could I have the name and number of the paper’s owner?”

  “She’s right here,” Kate said. “I’ll put you through.”

  A moment later, she chirped, “Kate Hadley, owner of the Corkscrew Weekly, good morning.”

  Until now, Kate wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel tension hissing down a telephone line. If she’d been on her cell phone, birds would be plunging from the skies.

  Finally, he ground out, “If you don’t keep my name and home out of your paper, Ms. Hadley, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers. You don’t want that. The people I employ will not hesitate at slashing through your bullshit and hanging it out to dry.”

  Click. Followed by the buzz of a dead line.

  Kate pressed the record button seconds too late to catch that threat for evidence.

  “Nice speaking to you, too.” She slammed the phone into its cradle with more bravado than she felt. Not when sh
e wasn’t convinced that slashing and hanging had been meant entirely in a metaphorical sense.

  Chapter Two

  For two weeks running, Mrs. Pinnings had failed to put in her usual weekly appearance at the Post Office. On the Thursday morning of the second week, back propped against the redbrick wall and her stare fixed on the off-street parking bays in front, Kate’s stomach clenched. She checked her watch.

  Almost nine thirty.

  Mrs. Pinnings wasn’t coming.

  Kate waited another ten minutes and then took off at a brisk march for the police station at the corner of the high street. She pushed through the set of double glass doors, greeting the officer manning the reception desk with a wave as she passed. “Is Harry back there?”

  “I haven’t seen him leave.”

  “Excellent,” she called out as she swung through the inner doors.

  Harry’s gaze lifted from the computer screen, tracking her as she wended a path between the desks and pot plants in the open plan area. The only other officer present, Nadia, glanced up and gave Kate a quick smile before going back to her furious typing.

  “Where is everyone?” Kate asked as she stopped in front of Harry’s desk.

  “Routine rounds.” He settled deeper into his chair and folded his arms as he looked up at her from beneath that dark blond brow. “Please tell me this is a social call.”

  His easy drawl and laid-back charm invited her to take a seat and leave the worrying for tomorrow. Beneath that uniform and his promotion to Chief Sergeant, he was still the sun-streaked blond, golden-tanned surfer dude she’d crushed on for most of her school years. The guy who’d rocked his guitar in the garage and refused to grow up beyond getting a respectable job in a town that boasted the best waves in Cornwall.

  Kate wasn’t amused. That crush was history and right now she needed an aggressive law enforcer. “Mrs. Pinnings didn’t show up again today.”

  “And again, no one’s filed a missing person report.”